Update on September 1, 11:30 PM UTC: This article has been updated to include information from the Halborn Information Security Director.
Last month, Crypto’s user and artist NFT Princess Hypio told her followers that she lost $ 170,000 in cryptography and non -fungible files after a scammer convinced her to play a game with them in Steam.
While she was “meaningless” playing with the scammer, they were stealing their funds in secret and pirateing their discord. The same tactic was used in three of his other friends, he wrote in a publication on August 21 in X.
It turns out that the tactic has existed for a while and is known by some as the “test of my game”, which users have reported for years in different ways.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Kraken’s Security Director, Nick Perceco, said these methods have become an increasingly popular attack method
“Try my game” Hack: how works
The cryptographic version of the scam involves a hacker that joins a server or group of discords, which is waiting, learning about how users interact with each other and then use that information to gain confidence.
Then, the hacker asks users if they have cryptography or NFT, often pretending interest to ask questions and evaluate which digital assets could have. In the case of Princess Hypio, they had a Milady NFT, which turned out that she was attacked.
After identifying an objective with Crypto, the hacker invites victims to play a game, sending a link to a server with Trojan malware that provides access to user devices, allowing them to steal personal information and drain any connected wallet.
In the case of Princess Hypio, the ploy consisted of convincing her to download a game in Steam offering to buy it for her. The game itself was safe, but the server on which the game was housed was malicious.
He lost $ 170,000 of the attack, he said.
It occurs only days after Discord published his explanator of deceptive practices policies, warning that promoting or carrying out financial scams on the social platform violates the terms of use.
“These scams do not exploit the code; they exploit trust. The attackers get through friends and press people to take measures they would not take,” I said.
“The greatest vulnerability in Crypto is not the code, it is confidence. ESPECADORES exploit the community spirit and curiosity to take advantage of good intentions.”
The attackers are embedded in communities, learn culture, mimic trusted friends and then attack, he said.
Gabi Urrutia, director of Information Security of the Halborn cybersecurity firm, told Cointelegraph that the scam combines social engineering with malware, and although it is not “very sophisticated”, it is insidious due to its “abuse of confidence among the members of a community.”
“It is not as important as traditional phishing in volume, but it is increasingly frequent in the communities of web3 and games, where there is a mixture between pairs to peers and high value assets,” he said.
“The key here is psychological manipulation: the attacker begins to be part of the community, learn the jargon and presents himself as a friend of a friend.”
Estafador tactics through Crypto
In February, a user under the Raetheraven mango published in the Malwarebytes forum that had fallen in the “infamous scam” after someone who thought was a friend sent a link. A Reddit forum that began in July also warned about the scams aimed at the players.
I perceive told Cointegraph that, although the cryptographic industry tends to see these scams first, the tactic extends through the sectors.
He said that the best way to avoid being caught is to have a “healthy skepticism,” confirming identities through another channel, avoiding executing unknown software and remembering that “doing nothing is safer than taking a risky step.”
“If something feels hurried, generous or too good to be true, it almost always is. You don’t trust, verify.”
Urrutia said the defense implies very specific habits, stop and think before signing anything, keep the privileges to a minimum and avoid using the same device for games and managing wallets.
“And from the community side, there is also much to do: limit the direct messages of strangers, verify new members and strengthen the security culture. Ultimately, the great challenge is not technological, but cultural,” he added.
False recruitment campaigns even worse
However, I also said that while discord scams are increasing, a more widespread tendency in cryptography currently involves false recruiters.
Related: North Korean hackers point to cryptographic developers with false recruitment tests
In a recent case in June, a threat actor aligned in North Korea addressed employment applicants in the cryptographic industry with malware designed to steal passwords for cryptographic wallets and password administrators.
“The impersonation of discords is increasing rapidly, but the most widespread trend we are tracking today are the false recruitment campaigns in which the victims are attracted to job offers and deceive themselves to click on the phishing links,” said Perco.
Meanwhile, Urrutia said that the highest volume of scams that Halborn is seeing implies the blind firm, the approval phishing and the like, but all are “evolutions of the same idea: not steal the key by force, but make the user deliver it voluntarily.”
“A recent and very publicized case was the Bybit attack, where the attackers took advantage of blind firms and poor permits management to drain the funds.”
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